Monday, September 23, 2013

2013 Friday Night Football Week 3: Brady vs. Comanche

Every football season there is at least one Friday where we have to cover games in the rain. This last Friday was that Friday. It had been raining consistently since Thursday morning and the weather system was widespread covering almost all of our 15-county readership. And it was a slow, soaking rain (just what we need to help with the drought) so any school that didn't have an artificial turf field was going to have a pretty muddy game.

I was originally scheduled to shoot our Game of the Week between Mason and Christoval. But when I came in to work Friday afternoon I received an alert from our website saying that students of the Christoval school district were going to be released early due to flooding concerns. I immediately thought, "If they're letting kids go early because of flooding, will the football team be making the trip down to Mason for the game?" After a quick phone call we had our answer. Game cancelled. We decided to switch our Game of the Week to the Sterling City vs. Robert Lee game. I had already assigned another photographer to cover that game, so here I was with nothing to do on a Football Friday night.

There was no way I was just going to sit around the office like a lump waiting for everyone else to send their photos in. I pulled out our list of local games and decided I would make the hour-long drive down to Brady where the Bulldogs would be hosting Comanche for their homecoming game.

I remembered from last year's rain game at Central High School that no matter what I did, there was no way I was going to be able to completely protect my camera gear from getting wet. The only thing I could do was hold off the inevitable for as long as I could with trash bags and duct tape. Once I was somewhat confident in my crude present-wrapped lenses and camera bodies I headed to the field.

As expected, the game was going to be a muddy mess. Two days of several inches of rain made Brady's field sloppy. I'm sure the Comanche coaches were wondering how they were going to get their players' uniforms back to resembling white and not be forever stained a light beige.

The game itself was pretty straight forward with both teams having to adjust their offense and defense to the wet and muddy conditions. Brady was on the scoreboard first late in the first quarter but Comanche answered back quickly to pull within one point 7-6. Comanche scored again mid way through the second quarter to take the lead for good at 12-7. This was the score at the half when I had to leave to edit and transmit photos back to the office. I wasn't able to return to the field before time expired in the fourth. But judging from freelance sports writer Mike Lee's story, Comanche's defense performed spectacularly holding Brady to just one first down for the entire second half. Comanche won the game 25-7 handing Brady a depressing loss at their homecoming game.